What a Woman Is Owed in Muslim Law

Patriarchy is a phenomenon worldwide, and Muslims are as susceptible to it as any other culture. There have been a lot of artificial mechanisms at trying to break it down in this country, but nonetheless there are still a lot of remnants of it. Some examples from Muslim law give the picture. In Muslim law a woman does not have to serve her husband in her house, and she cannot be forced to. If she refuses to cook, the man has to provide somebody who will cook, or he has to cook himself. She is highly encouraged to do it, but it is literally within the Islamic law that she has a right to say: I do not want to cook. It is based on the hadith and on the scholars' interpretation; and this was literally fourteen hundred years ago, when these judgements were being pronounced.

A woman's money is hers. If a woman earns money, and the husband takes the money from her, she has a right to go to a qāḍī, a judge, because it is a crime; it is not his money. Any money that comes into her hands is hers, whereas of the money that the man earns a portion has to go to the woman, by law. So it is very interesting.

Then there is the phenomenon of the abuse of certain characteristics that the man has — certainly the physical ones. This is changing in this country, but generally, in most societies, men tend to be physically stronger and have been able to coerce women physically to do things. And there is a very interesting verse in the Qurʾān about Āsiyah, the wife of Pharaoh, when she says: O God, save me from my husband, the tyrant.

It is really fascinating that this is a duʿāʾ: a prayer in the Qurʾān, from a woman, about her husband, who is a tyrant, asking to be saved from him. And one wonders, historically, for how many women that has been a type of sustenance. In this culture as well there are still very serious problems with domestic violence. People tend to look at the public space and not so much at the private space; the private space is forgotten, and a lot of mental cruelty, a great deal of it, is all still going on. But there is a type of openness that has emerged in the culture where these things can be talked about.

Mauritania, which is where Shaykh ʿAbdullāh is from, offers a comparison in the matter of domestic violence and things like that, and it is interesting that in Mauritania it is impossible for a man to hit a woman. It is literally impossible, first because of the tribe: marital relationships are very much related to the family, and so for there to be any injustice towards the woman is going to weigh very heavily on inter-family relationships and things like that. And the women generally tend to be very educated, from his group particularly, and to know their rights; they are strong women. There is also no polygamy in that culture at all, because the women put a condition in their marriage contracts: I do not want a second wife. They know that this is a right that they have — they can stipulate it in a contract, and they do. That is absolutely so. It comes, again, from the scholars' understanding and interpretation, and there are instances in the early community, among the companions, where that was established.